10863Coptic Unicode Headaches

I’ve resurrected a project I worked on a couple of years ago that ground to a halt when I encountered sorting problems with Coptic Unicode.

The essence of the problem is this:

A list of Coptic letters 1-24 (Alfa through Ouu) will sort correctly in Microsoft Excel, Word and Access. However, if the remaining 6 letters (25 Shie, 26 Fei, 27 Hori, 28 Gangia, 29 Shima and 30, Dei) are added to the list, these letters appear at the beginning of the list so that the alphabetic order is rendered in this way:

25 Shei

26 Fei

27 Hori

28 Gangia

29 Shima

30 Dei

1 Alfa

2 Vida

3 Gamma

4, Dalda etc.

This behavior manifests itself in Microsoft Office as it does in the data base in Open Office. Curiously, however, the Open Office spreadsheet seems to sort in the correct order.

I REALLY need sorting to work correctly in Microsoft Excel and Access so the fact that it works OK in Open Office’s spreadsheet is pretty much a moot point.

Has anyone else run into a similar problem and if so, how did you resolve it?